I therefore think that a different approach to creating a level playingfield than mem limit ... a theme that creates a level playingfield and promotes creativity and gamedesign might be very difficult to come up with. Not sure what you mean with 'set it up and let it run'

'Set it up and let it run' was a Ludumdare gameplay require ment one time. If you've not participated in any other game programming contest then I strongly encourage you too. They all have innane 'themes', rules, and requirements such as these. IMHO they don't encourage creativity, they squash it.

Quote

16K > 4K but it is still a mem limit and to improve my game within the rules, I would have to do some hacking and ugglyfying my code.

I really don't see a problem here. If you don't like squashing code then go code a game for the next idev games contest or ludumdare or speedhack or whatever.

if the contest can wait til at least mid-April, I can have the web-based entry submission ready (well, it's actually done now, just haven't tested it much) so people won't have to rely on me checking my emails.. heheh

If you want prizes for this competition ... PM me or email me with details of where you're going to promote it . We've got at least one sponsor lined up but - understandably - they'd like to be sure the competition is going to get decent coverage before they commit more than a token prize.

I need a list of news sites, forums, etc where we're going to promote this. (some blessing from Sun + a note on the front page of JGO would be handy, hint, hint )

Having never used LWJGL, I wasn't sure about this comp, but a quick look at lwjgl.org is tempting me; it would be good to learn some openGL. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of documentation on LWJGL though. Anyone care to comment on whether it's possible to get by with an OpenGL book & try to find the corresponding calls in LWJGL?

If it were LWJGL150k, the engine from my recent 3D game demo would port over no problem (Still need better gameplay thought ). However 16k is a tenth of that and makes me wonder what would be left after some ruthless pruning. I'd believe it impossible if not for looking at the 4k games and seeing what has been achieved there. Maybe go for 4 or 16 colour images rather than 256 colour. That would save quite a bit. Cut down on the configurable options, remove support for sloping floors & ceilings. Maybe that'd get me down to around 80k. Hum, no where near 16k yet. Can it be done... and more to the point, do I have enough 'spare' time?

You have to forget all your old techniques to make a game in such little space. For 16k its best to think about procedural textures and gameplay that doesn't require elaborate meshes to be fun. I'm wondering if anyone will use animated meshes in the 16k contest.

author=jbanes When one considers that early video games often had *less* than 4K of space to work with *and* were often more fun than today's games, one has to wonder where the idea that 4K won't work came from. Have we lost that much of our creativity and "push the envelope" mentality? Does anyone else remember the days when only the best of the best could even hope to code a video game? Not because others were incompetent, but more because you had to know what every byte was doing and how the system used it? There were some serious hardware limitations in those days, and it was up to the software people to make up for it.

Some good comments, here are my thoughts. I just finished rewriting my Double Deck Pinochle 8086 DOS game into Java which took it from an 11k .exe to 110k of classes. Not bad at all, in my opinion.

I originally wrote in Z-80 as tight as possible to run on a 16k Radio Shack TRS-80, and the rewrite in 8086 didn't add that much size. I didn't have any idea how it would size out in Java, and speed is my main concern in any event, but it didn't balloon out that much to my surprise. Both are text interfaces so are directly comparable.

I am especially pleased with the speed. In initial testing I didn't bother putting pauses between plays of the players thinking it would hit a programming error and crash but instead it played and displayed all four players cards instantaneously. I couldn't have asked more from assembler.

I wrote to an abstract interface API so I am now replacing the JTextArea with a GUI implementation of the interface. This is my first Java project and I plan on staying in it now for a career. I've got a lot more to write yet before looking for work, though.

Having never used LWJGL, I wasn't sure about this comp, but a quick look at lwjgl.org is tempting me; it would be good to learn some openGL. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of documentation on LWJGL though. Anyone care to comment on whether it's possible to get by with an OpenGL book & try to find the corresponding calls in LWJGL?

If it were LWJGL150k, the engine from my recent 3D game demo would port over no problem (Still need better gameplay thought ). However 16k is a tenth of that and makes me wonder what would be left after some ruthless pruning. I'd believe it impossible if not for looking at the 4k games and seeing what has been achieved there. Maybe go for 4 or 16 colour images rather than 256 colour. That would save quite a bit. Cut down on the configurable options, remove support for sloping floors & ceilings. Maybe that'd get me down to around 80k. Hum, no where near 16k yet. Can it be done... and more to the point, do I have enough 'spare' time?

Alan

Don't forget, you can compress it all into a .jar file. Also jbanes provides a SuperPackMe tool for compressing images.

Well, I downloaded LWJGL and gave it a blast. The keyboard & mouse polling is ludicrously easy to use. It just works. The openGL bit was easy too once I'd figured out those poxy NIO ByteBuffers. The vector library is quite handy but works considerably differently from mine. However I've been kicking my heels the last week waiting for the comp to start.

I'm planning a 3D game based on numerically calculated terrain with a model system refactored from my Storm the Castle demo. Probably first person. Ideas range from a Robin Hood type game (but rather a lot of trees to draw = lousy framerate), to something set in the american west. Probably a shoot-em-up, but possibly a buffalo herding type game. People mostly like shooters though, so that'll probably be it. Maybe a storyline to do with outlaws or bandits (to keep it out of the towns) but I quite fancy the us civil war as there's lots of good historical stuff on the web (I'm really enjoying just reading it). Anyway, wheels spinning, poised for the off, assuming this happens...it all looks a bit quiet.

Not sure what to do about sound though. Procedural tones and noises are easy enough, but what about music. LWJGL supports mod format, but from recollection those are a combo of sampled sounds and midi-like sequencing & probably too big. I'd like to use MIDI, but it depends on whether the rules state that the judges machines will have soundbanks installed. If not a possibility to to generate procedural tones & write a software sequencer. Would sound pretty awful though; worse than Java MIDI and that has the sound quality of a strangled cat.

Using the obfuscater/kzip chain you can pretty much count on getting about 32k into 16k so that gives us a bit of breathing room.

Thumbs up on the obfusticator. I ran proguard over some code and it came out less than two thirds of the starting size. I haven't tried alternative zippers yet, but heard that 7zip is good. Even (say) a 2% gain would be another 320 bytes of code. Worth a look later for that final code squeezing.

Quote

So, its May 1st, any word on when/if this thing is going to start?

What happened to woogley?

His website hasn't been updated for a while. Probably concentrating on his schoolwork, which is a good call.

His website hasn't been updated for a while. Probably concentrating on his schoolwork, which is a good call.

well you're half right . My site HAS been updated (almost daily), you just don't know the address . Kev and a few others have seen peeks at it. And yes school kinda threw a small roadblock at me, I'm graduating May 28th so.. it's been kind of busy. Also I have driving class every night so that's no fun either .

Anyway the launch date in my sig isn't set in stone, that's just the MAX TIME I expect it to take. I already have the database scripts completed and stuff, just putting the pieces together now.

Thanks for the heads up. May 21st it is then. I see you've been busy on the submission page and this clarifies how the game should be presented (i.e. homepage &| jar &| webstart). The licencing page is also clear. We will also need a rules page (No 3rd party libs for 4k, assume LWJGL for 16k, any midi soundbank?, does jar have to have a manifest, etc., Oh & I forgot - duration) I'll hold off on entry submission until closer to the start. No hurry, get the school stuff done first. This will give me time on learning to arrange music, since I will need to stay compatible with the creative commons licence. Time to tinkle the ivories

BTW: Are the left hand menus intended for your private control of the CMS? If so, should they be generally viewable?

BTW: Are the left hand menus intended for your private control of the CMS? If so, should they be generally viewable?

Yes those links are only for the CMS managers (so far myself hehe), and if you clicked one you would need a password . They shouldn't be viewable from that specific page though, I think I included the wrong menu file. Thanks for looking out

java-gaming.org is not responsible for the content posted by its members, including references to external websites,
and other references that may or may not have a relation with our primarily
gaming and game production oriented community.
inquiries and complaints can be sent via email to the info‑account of the
company managing the website of java‑gaming.org